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I work out of a small office in a co-working environment. Next to my dedicated space is a hot-desking area used primarily for video conferencing. Thanks to a bank of west-facing windows, an overenthusiastic heating policy, and unseasonably hot weather, meetings are often conducted with the doors open, and it’s then that I overhear some of the most engrossing insights into the minds of both clients and designers, that I’ve ever encountered.

Last week, as I munched on my lunch, I was eavesdropping on a meeting to determine the design direction of a fairly well known site (that will remain anonymous). The owner was connected from Australia, there were high-up members of the team connected from the US, and the UAE, and the design/dev team was about 10ft from me.

The conversation was increasingly heated, and centered around the fact that one of the design team had been removed from the project: such-and-such was a great person, and really dedicated, but her design style was all wrong; things had gone off the rails since such-and-such left; such-and-such did beautiful work, but it didn’t test well with users; and so forth.

Material Design…is seen as the standard to aspire to

The management team were clearly desperate to uncover a new design direction in which to take the service, and the design team were clearly desperate to accommodate them. After several hours of back and forth based on little (as far as I could hear) but subjective opinions, someone uttered a phrase that almost made me crash the meeting with subjectives of my own:

“Why don’t we just use Material Design?”

I’m not sure who said it, but it sounded like it was in the room. What followed was a cacophony of praise for Google’s design system: The designers admired it, the one developer I could identify loved it, the owner hadn’t heard of it but loved Google’s business model, the UX Lead—who until this point, I hadn’t heard contribute anything, said it was the “ultimate refinement of human-centered design”.

Five minutes later the meeting wrapped, a design direction chosen, a design team clutching a set of guidelines, a development team mentally mapping components. Leaving me, watching in horrified fascination as they filed back to their respective offices.

An Unhelpful Question
Material Design is astronomically popular. So popular in fact that I’ve spoken to numerous designers who refer to their work as “Material Design” when they have either never read the specification, or are ignoring it entirely.

Of course, there’s no reason that designers should implement Material Design. It’s simply an indication of its omnipresence that it is seen as the standard to aspire to.

The question posed in that meeting (Why don’t we just use Material Design?) reverses the design process in a way that epitomizes the problem with any design system. The question that should have been asked was: “Would employing Material Design solve some, or all, of our problems?”

If It’s Good Enough For Google
There’s an assumption that Material Design, as published by Google, is a magic bullet that addresses most, if not all, challenges in modern web design. I think that assumption probably stems from the fact that the Material Design specification is well written, and feels authoritative. I also think that assumption is false.

Material Design was initially intended as a solution to Google’s design problem—unifying a disparate group of services and apps, into a single brand identity and experience. It is now described as “a comprehensive guide for visual, motion, and interaction design across platforms and devices.” Which you have to admit, sounds pretty awesome.

when the insects take over the earth there will still be Google products about to receive their long-awaited Material Design upgrade

Just last week, there were reports in the design news that another Google product was about to receive its long-awaited Material Design upgrade. It doesn’t matter when you’re reading this, when the insects take over the earth there will still be Google products about to receive their long-awaited Material Design upgrade.

At the time of writing, it’s been five years since Google went public with Material Design. In that time, Google’s products have been constantly revised. Anything that hasn’t been updated in five years is probably at least mothballed— Google is far from shy when it comes to killing off projects.

If Google itself struggles to implement Material Design, and it has the get-out-of-jail-free card of writing (and rewriting) the specification with its own product demands front and center, how difficult is it to apply it to a third party site or app?

Don’t Even Get Me Started on That Floating Button
Probably the most controversial element of the Material Design specification is the floating call-to-action button that hovers in the bottom right of the screen, joyfully obscuring the single piece of content you are trying to access.

Material Design, means restructuring the architecture of your site

Design thinking is split on the floating action button, and anecdotally I’d say it’s roughly an even split. Some designers love the forced simplicity of a single call-to-action button imposing a primary action on a screen. Other designers object to an over-simplified user journey when natural experiences tend to be more nuanced.

In many cases implementing Material Design, means restructuring the architecture of your site or app. In other words, for the sake of an aesthetic your project needs to conform to Google’s preferred approach.

When all You’ve Got is Material Design, Everything Looks Like Gmail
There’s truth in the pop-wisdom that, when all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

we’ll look for problems that don’t exist, in order to explain the solutions we have to hand

There are as many design approaches as there are designers and it would be preposterous of me to say “design is…” and expect it to be universally true. However, design, when done well, isn’t about putting a shiny polish on a project, design is inherent to what the project is, and to what it aims to become.

By framing a project in Material Design — or to any other design system — we are presented with a set of answers to which, as rational cause-and-effect minds, we will try to find questions. This means two things: firstly we’ll very likely distort our problems to fit those solutions because they’re the only solutions available that don’t break the specification; secondly we’ll look for problems that don’t exist, in order to explain the solutions we have to hand.

Why Don’t We Just Use Material Design?
Material Design is a design system, not the design system. Its failings are the failings of all design systems when applied to third party projects; namely that it is driven by a different, often undisclosed, set of priorities.

Of course, it’s entirely honest to confess that many designers dislike Material Design because it’s mind numbingly boring to implement someone else’s ideas. After all, we didn’t get into design to abandon creative thinking in favor of a paint-by numbers, one-size-fits-all approach.

Personal preference aside. We shouldn’t be using Material Design, because it puts the cart before the horse. It is a set of solutions to someone else’s set of problems. It may eventually work for Google, but it won’t work for you.

Some site owners may well have been surprised this morning, when checking their analytics, to discover that customers are still visiting them using Internet Explorer.

Despite the fact that yesterday Microsoft endedsupport for any version of IE older than 11—Microsoft will not be providing updates and security patches for them—IE8, 9 and 10 have not been ‘switched off’. The decline of Internet Explorer has long beendocumented as the world switched from IE to Chrome, but reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated.

When creating a website project, it’s always important to think about the end users of the site. Frequently it’s the case, however, that many designers focus too much on creating a site that will impress their clients, forgetting that it’s the audience who really matter.

Businesses obsess over their visual brands. They spend days debating the typeface selection, but give no thought to the words.

In most cases, a company will assign the first wave of written communication to someone internal who’s “good at writing.” This is usually an English major, who knows a lot about spelling and grammar, but knows nothing about how to bring a brand’s voice to life. This means the company’s first website, press release and product guide are a collage of this poor staffer’s voice, what they think the company is, and arbitrary edits made during the revision process.

Writing using your brand’s voice needs to be done correctly from the very start. Otherwise, it’s impossible to know if your brand is effective. Too often, a company’s brand image is on point, but it’s being dragged down by mindless copy, with no clear voice. This leads the company to assume the whole brand is ineffective, so they throw the whole thing out, and start over. Such a shame.

We all know about Facebook’s most popular button: the Like button. You’ve probably already used the thumbs-up icon more times than you care to admit (perhaps to boost your friends’ self-esteem whenever they share a funny-cat video), but now, Facebook is finally giving us the opportunity to express ourselves in a slightly more complex way.

Announced late last week, the new Facebook experiment, dubbed “Reactions,” will let users express six different emotions that previously were neglected by the very limited Like button. So now, when you’re feeling angry, sad, loving, happy, shocked or like laughing,you get to choose an emoji that represents each new emotion.

People who wanted more depth to their Facebook experience beyond the ultra-simplicity of just Liking everything went wild with excitement.

For the past 5+ years, I’ve been in web development marketing in some shape or form. From the customers to the travel, it’s been an interesting journey, to say the least. I’ve done it all: sales, digital marketing, paid, organic, trade shows, content curation/creation, etc.

I’m now at the stage in my career when the next generation of marketers are asking me what things I wish I had known before I got into the industry. Sure, I could wax lyrical about great content, or create a list of SEO tools/tips/tricks/life hacks. Heck, I could even create “how to guide” for talking B2B sales smack. But, I won’t. All of the above will change, evolve and develop as new trends take hold. Rather, I decided to keep it real. Thus, here’s what I actually wish I had known when I started in this crazy web development world:

To celebrate their 20th birthday, Opera are launching a new brand identity, the most visually striking element of which, is their new logo.

Gone is the familiar high-contrast ‘O’, to be replaced with a chunky, three dimensional ring; intended to convey the idea of Opera as a conduit to the Web, and to the information, entertainment, and services, therein.

Today, Google released an updatetoitslogo which it describes as: “simple, uncluttered, colorful, friendly”. The discernibly scrappy dotcom-era style has been replaced by a simpler, geometric sans-serif, with only the famous blue, red, yellow, blue, green, red color sequence surviving.

The new design is a vast improvement aesthetically, but it’s unlikely it will stand the test of time because it’s too now, too of the moment. This is Google’s 2015–2016 logo.

Social media has become a constant in modern daily life. By now it’s not uncommon for grandparents to have their own profiles on Facebook. This means that marketing on social media is beginning to have less limits on possible target demographics, and increasingly greater reach as the number of users on major social media sites rises.

DESIGNING A SUCCESSFUL ONLINE BRAND DEPENDS NOT ONLY ON COMPELLING IDEAS, BUT EQUALLY ON ADAPTABILITY

That said, the social media marketing realm is as dependent on constant change as the social media landscape itself. Designing a successful online brand depends not only on compelling ideas, but equally on adaptability.

Without a dynamic brand, users of new and up-and-coming, or even outdated social networks will be outside the reach of your brand. This is why understanding a few different aspects of the current social media landscape is key to online marketing success.